Michael W. Merriam

917-455-1420 • michael@ludoception.com

Narrative Designer and Independent Researcher

I study the ways in which Game Writing, as a sub-discipline of Creative Writing, encroaches on and redefines areas historically treated as the domain of coding and game design. My research centers on the intersection of game writing and game design, particularly where quest structure, game balance, and quantitative difficulty could inform pedagogy. As an educator, I build curricula where the classroom operates first as a game design space, then as an interdependent game world made of the elements each student built.

Contact me

Experience

DigiPen Institute of Technology

Course Author, CS 5110 System Design Methods (Online MS in Game Development) • 2026 — Present

Authoring the systems design methods course for the online MSGD, built in Unreal Engine 5.

Applied Game Designs (AGD)

Head of Game Design • 2026

Led game design across the studio's projects, including Paragon, a deterministic tactical combat game.

Marauder Tech

Quest Designer, Narrative Designer/Director • May 2024 — Dec 2025

Narrative design, lorekeeping, quest and mission design, level design, character design and related duties on Price of Glory, a live-service multiplayer mobile strategy game; the game remains live. Ref. Contact - Shawn Borsky (Senior Product Manager) - shawn (at) borsky.co

University of Central Florida

Instructor • 2023 - 2024

Created material, designed and/or updated modules, and taught courses Introduction to Digital Media and Game Design Portfolio Development

Comets and Cockpits

Guest Writer • 2022

Created material for a TTRPG module, centered around an original creature with unique behavior, backstory, and lore

Full Sail University

Course Director (Writing for Games, Script Analysis and Criticism, et. al.) • Dec, 2018 — Jun, 2022

Designed and delivered course materials for undergraduate and graduate students that aligned with curriculum requirements. Leveraged multimedia tools to simulate collaborative writers' room experiences in online environments, enhancing student engagement. Re-focused all creative writing assignments and assessments toward industry skills acquisition. Prepared curriculum maps, and organized trainings on the preparation of curriculum maps for all faculty of the Creative Writing MFA program. Gained extensive knowledge of ACCSC accreditation standards through direct involvement in the accreditation process. Applied best practices in curriculum development and assessment to meet and exceed academic benchmarks. Adapted teaching methods and course materials in response to evolving accreditation requirements, demonstrating flexibility and a commitment to educational excellence.

Created a modular, synchronous online Writing for Games course that taught game design skills through collaborative writing (for the Creative Writing MFA program)
Re-designed and taught the MFA Creative Writing course in Script Analysis & Criticism
Taught MFA courses in Visual Storytelling and Character Creation & Development
Taught BFA courses in Science Fiction and Children's Entertainment

Radio Theater Project

Writer • 2018

Adapted works of literature into radio scripts for national syndication, including Timon of Athens and The Diary of Lady Murasaki.

Partly Wicked

Escape Room Designer and Consultant • 2015 — Present

Design and consulting for escape rooms, including work for Escapology, then the largest escape room company in the United States.

Looking Glass Magazine

Editor in Chief • 2008 — 2011

Led an eighteen-person team; designed CYOA games and puzzles for print; built one of the first magazines made for the iPhone, profiled in The New Yorker's Talk of the Town (September 2008).

Time Out Istanbul

Editor in Chief • 2007 — 2008

Education

University of Central Florida

Doctoral Coursework, Texts & Technology PhD Program • 2023 — 2025

Teaching Fellowship

Doctoral-level coursework including the program's AI training sequence (2024)

Columbia University in the City of New York

Master of Arts, Medieval/Renaissance Studies • 2015

Thesis on educational role-playing games in the early medieval period; coursework in the anthropology of play and the archaeology of toys

Columbia University in the City of New York

Bachelor of Arts, Archaeology, English and Comparative Literature • 2010 — 2014

Summa cum Laude

Projects

Recording the Cut: Single-Context Recording for IDN Traversal Preservation

Author (peer-reviewed proceedings paper) • ICIDS 2026

Adapts archaeological single-context recording and the Harris matrix to separate observational record from interpretation in documenting interactive digital narrative traversals.

Course Correction: Questions as Nodes in Quizzes and Interactive Non-Fiction

Author / Presenter (proceedings paper and talk) • Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) 2026

Ludoception applied to instructional systems; the quiz as a directed graph, with a working artifact.

Ludoception: Perceiving the Designed Game in Literary and Digital Texts

Panelist • Modern Language Association (MLA) 2027

Stacking the Deck: Diegetic Games and Ludoceptive Agency in YA and Children's Literature

Session organizer • NeMLA 2027

Taxonomic Theater

Author (book chapter) • Bloomsbury, forthcoming

Chapter on grief and games, with Marc Ouellette

Co-author (book chapter) • McFarland, forthcoming

Asynchronous Architectures of Ritual Time: Designing Synchronous Experience in Play and Pedagogy (working title)

Author (book chapter) • forthcoming

Ludochronism: Procedural Verisimilitude in Gameworld Cartography

Author (essay) • Imago Mundi, special issue on Maps and the Imagination

The Question Is a Node

Invited presenter • TALOS Lab, Crete, May 2026 (also presented at the SA4AW conference)

The attribute as game element

Co-presenter, with William Walker • Serious Play Conference, Duke University, August 2026

Attribution flattened into quantified cause; applications from K-12 through university.

Game, Text, Match - Diegetic Games as Narrative Systems - NeMLA 2026

Chair and Organizer • March 2026

Organized and chaired an interdisciplinary panel on diegetic games in literature, film, and media. The session invited papers that treated fictional games as meaningful systems in their own right, applying game studies and narrative theory to analyze rule-based structures embedded within stories.

Shadow Math - On Shirley Jackson and The Lottery - ACH 2025

Author / Presenter • June 2025

A poster and talk analyzing The Lottery as a story containing a hidden computational system, and further proposing a method of using Game Design as the disciplinary lens through which to perform close readings on diegetic games found within literature

Equity Quest

Author / Presenter • June 2024

Virtual-Based Games in Education Conference, synchronous online presentation about incorporating real-world inequalities into the design of gamified modules.

Risk and Re-word - Board Game Themes as Encrypted Cognitive Tools

Author / Presenter • March 2024

NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) seminar developing the concept of 'ludoception' to describe a cognitive faculty honed by games, linking thematic elements with game mechanics to enhance understanding of real-world systems and social rules.

Checkmate or Chat-Bot? Leveraging AI to Gamify Classroom Learning

Author • March 2024

NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) conference paper on ludic curriculum design using AI to create egregoric NPCs of student groups, and incorporating narrative for enhanced student engagement.

Metattendance - Social Deduction Games as Models for Asymmetrical Policies in a Post-Attendance World

Author / Presenter • January 2024

CFA Games Conference, University of Kentucky. The paper focused on using the asymmetrical rules for player roles in social deduction games as models for asymmetrical attendance policies, and for methods of including antagonistic students without needing to change their behavior or attitude.

Game Balance and Classroom Fairness (Poster Session)

Author / Designer • October 2023

SIGDOC (Special Interest Group on Design of Communication) interactive poster session diagramming the potential of game balance (in the field of design) to provide new conceptual models of 'fairness' in the classroom

Branch vs. Root

Presenter • Games Based Learning Virtual Conference 2022

A talk on skill assessment in gamified curricula: skill trees rather than merit badges.

Game Writing Studio (GWS)

Designer / Developer • ongoing

Single-file HTML teaching modules for narrative design, with a directed-graph quiz engine and the anamorphic grading system (skill badges; scores only climb).

Undead Computer (undead.computer) - ELO Exhibit

Designer • July-August 2024

Electronic Literature Organization exhibit titled Undead Computer, a game-like meta-exhibit focused on the exploration and interactive engagement with obsolete technologies. This exhibit invites participants to interact with, modify, and repurpose the text of the website itself, while dead links and other phenomena speak to the decay of the once hopeful techno-space.

Writing for Games (textbook)

Author • in final stages

Hired Mourner

Designer / Developer •

Interactive fiction delivered as a simulated-iPhone pseudo-OS, set in an alternate America where hired mourning is ordinary work.

Aven Lysarre

Designer •

Paper-prototyped board game: a world-map board and cards styled as dime-store paperback covers.

Peer Gynt

Script writer (radio production broadcast on national radio) • 2018

King John (short film)

Art installation, screened at the Shakespeare Birthplace • 2013

Skills

Educational Technology Integration (Script Languages, et. al.)

Integrating educational technology to reshape the classroom experience; integrating Unity and various script languages into courses in Level Design to bridge knowledge gaps and diverse fields of student expertise; leveraging tools that resonate with a digital-native audience, while meeting or exceeding the needs of non-student stakeholders.

Immersive Space Design

Escape rooms, theatrical experiences, and experience working in film and television art departments

Game Writing

Narrative Design and Narrative Direction, including methods for influencing technical departments through plain language documentation

Research Methods

Design research, close playing, archaeological recording methods adapted to interactive narrative; AI-assisted workflows (doctoral training, 2024)

Editorial

Magazine editing and production; criticism and interviews for n+1, the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and the Financial Times

Recognition

Profile in the New Yorker magazine (Talk of the Town)

The New Yorker • 2008

My work as editor of 'the first magazine for the iPhone' and with digital fashion photography written up in a September issue of the New Yorker magazine. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/09/29/dial-a-mag